Pepa & Ball

<< Tommy Cannon on promotional duties for his new one-man show, 'Loose Cannon' (P.S. This is literally the only picture of Cannon I can find without Ball - what a team)

What's exciting about this whole learning something new every day business, is you never know where it's going to lead. Who would have thought when I woke up this morning that the single most interesting piece of information to enter my mind would be about not art, nor science, but 90s female hip hop artists. For today I have discovered:

Salt 'n' Pepa, the all-female U.S. hip hop group, had three members.

Now I'd always assumed that Salt 'n' Pepa had two members - Salt, and you know, the other one. Well, there are two rappers in the band, are they are called Salt and Pepa respectively, but there was a DJ in the band too. Even I don't care, but I have to clarify the S'n'P line-up once and for all. Some other bands that have more members than you might think include Ben Folds Five, Alabama 3 and Run-DMC (similar to the tortuous Salt 'n' Pepa situation detailed above, as they had an additional DJ, Jam Master Jay, as if you needed telling).

Salt 'n' Pepa were responsible for some now dated yet still surprisingly memorable efforts, including "Whatta Man" and "Let's Talk About Sex" (there's a theme developing here). They went their separate ways at the end of the 90s, and Salt tried to launch a solo career, which truthfully was never going to work, as it's a bit like Tommy Cannon breaking up the duo to work on some projects (although this could have paved the way for a dream team, end-of-the-pier rap group - see the blog title). The group have now followed the inevitable career arc of any U.S. musician who once was considered credible and relevant, by making their own VH1 show, and bringing out a tie-in comeback album. Weak.

The feature in which I discovered S'n'P's third member revelation was looking at bad album titles, in this case referring to their sophomore effort, A Salt With A Deadly Pepa, which is terrible, not so much because it's a bad pun but because it's only half a pun, falling away into nothingness by the time we get to poor old Pepa. There are a lot of terrible titles out there, but I'd just like to point out the worst sin of album-naming, that is always overlooked. Naming your album after your band is essential for your debut album, and completely unforgivable on any subsequent albums. To me, it's always said "we're so totally apathetic about this album that we can't even be bothered to think of a name". If you're gonna give it a crap name, be like S'n'P, and do it with style.